grief and
humiliation she belonged to the past. Old-fashioned forms of penitence
attracted her.

"And what did the Abbe Bardin tell you?" asked Giselle, with a slight
movement of her shoulders.

"He only told me that he could not say at present whether that were my
vocation."

"Nor can I," said Giselle.

Jacqueline lifted up her face, wet with tears, which she had been leaning
on the lap of Giselle.

"I do not see what else I can do, unless you would get me a place as
governess somewhere at the ends of the earth," she said. "I could teach
children their letters. I should not mind doing anything. I never should
complain. Ah! if you lived all by yourself, Giselle, how I should implore
you to take me to teach little Enguerrand!"

"I think you might do better than that," said Giselle, wiping her
friend's eyes almost as a mother might have done, "if you would only
listen to Fred."

Jacqueline's cheeks became crimson.

"Don't mock me--it is cruel--I am too unworthy--it would pain me to see
him. Shame--regret--you understand! But I can tell you one thing,
Giselle--only you. You may tell it to him when he is quite old, when he
has been long married, and when everything concerning me is a thing of
the past. I never had loved any one with all my heart up to the moment
when I read in that paper that he had fought for me, that his blood had
flowed for me, that after all that had passed he still thought me worthy
of being defended by him."

Her tears flowed fast, and she added: "I shall be proud of that all the
rest of my life! If only you, too, would forgive me."

The heart of Giselle was melted by these words.

"Forgive you, my dear little girl? Ah! you have been better than I. I
forgot our old friendship for a moment--I was harsh to you; and I have so
little right to blame you! But come! Providence may have arranged all for
the best, though one of us may have to suffer. Pray for that some one.
Good-by--'au revoir!"

She kissed Jacqueline's forehead and was gone, before her cousin had
seized the meaning of her last words. But joy and peace came back to
Jacqueline. She had recovered her best friend, and had convinced her of
her innocence.

CHAPTER XIX

GENTLE CONSPIRATORS

Before Giselle went home to her own house she called on the Abbe Bardin,
whom a rather surly servant was not disposed to disturb, as he was just
eating his breakfast. The Abbe Bardin was Jacqueline's confessor, and he
held the same rel